CEO'S Secret Baby: A Standalone Surprise Pregnancy Romance

by Iona Rose

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  THE END

  Coming Soon… Sample Chapters

  NEW BOSS, OLD ENEMY

  Chapter One

  Ashton

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  I rub my hand over the back of my neck, massaging out the hard spot of stress, as I stare at my computer screen. My personal assistant quit three days ago because her boyfriend walked out on her. Hell, she was so damn cut up about it she couldn’t even work out her notice period. It annoyed me to no end, but what can you do. Women! You can’t live with them, and you can’t live without them.

  Someone knocks on the door of my office.

  “Come in,” I call.

  Sandra, one of the general secretaries, steps in with a large stack of papers in her hand.

  I groan internally at the sight of the pile of papers. What now?

  “I’ve got the resumes from some of the applicants for the personal assistant position Mr. Miller,” she says, getting straight to the point. “I’ve weeded out the total no goes and these are the ones I think are worth considering. If you can look through them and give final approval, I can get them over to HR and have them organize interviews straight away.”

  I’m tempted to tell her to just send the lot over to HR and have them deal with it, but I don’t. I don’t need another obvious mismatch. Plus, I’m a bit of a control freak, but I built this company myself from the ground up, so I’m used to doing everything myself. Now it's a multi-million-dollar concern, but old habits stick. “Thanks, Sandra.” I jerk my head towards one corner of my desk. “Put them down there, and I will get back to you after I’ve gone through them.”

  She does as she’s told, flashes me a quick smile, and scuttles back out of my office.

  If I can go through these quickly, HR might be able to set the interviews up for the end of this week, and if everything works out well, I might have a new personal assistant starting with me on Monday.

  I pick up the top resume from the pile and glance through it. Julie Anderson. Good qualifications, plenty of experience. Nothing that waves a red flag. I start my keep pile with her. The next three I scour over are no good. Two of them have children and the third, while having no obvious baggage, doesn’t have the kind of experience I need. I don’t know if she could keep up with the pace of this position. The next two are both good candidates. Millie Brown has worked in various high paced environments and Angus Heron has over five years of experience in a very similar industry to mine. At the moment, Angus is looking like the front runner. A man would hopefully never fall apart because his girl walked out on him.

  I keep going through the stack sorting them into the two piles. Angus still looks like the winner. Then I open the last file.

  Elena Woods

  My heart skips a beat when I see the name. It can’t be the same person. Surely not. That would be a bizarre coincidence. I lean back in my chair. Suddenly, the past comes back, vivid and in full color. Elena standing in front of me, her face defiant.

  “All that money and you bought those pants?” I taunt.

  The rest of my gang laughs. I strut away, proud as a peacock. Outside, I was smiling— inside I was devastated.

  Elena Woods and I went to the same high school, but we’re from completely different worlds. Her family is old money, so rich her father knew the President. My family was the opposite. We were dirt poor. My dad left us when I was just two years old and he never came back even to see me. My mom worked three jobs just to keep a roof over our heads, and the only reason I got to attend the Franklin School, a private school full of Elenas, was because I got a scholarship through a program for gifted students.

  My mom made sure my clothes were always clean and well pressed, but they were hand me downs, sourced from charity shops, or as the years went by, from the well-meaning mother of an older student, which shamed me immensely. I was the poor kid, the charity case, and I knew I would never fit in with my peers on their level. I made myself the dare devil rebel, always misbehaving. It made me popular, and I soon forgot I had nothing in common with any of my friends.

  I wore my hand-me-downs so aggressively, sewing skeleton faces on them and ripping them to shreds that I started a fashion all of my own. Soon, all the kids were ripping their jeans the way I had them while sewing on skulls and crossbones onto their clothes. I was king of my world, until Elena’s family moved to town, and she came to Franklin School.

  The first moment I saw her, I knew I had to have her. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life, with green eyes and long blonde hair flowing down her back like liquid sunshine. But she was also the daughter of an extremely rich banker and a supermodel. She was rich, spoilt, and not someone to be messed with.

  A girl like Elena would never date a poor kid like me. Ever.

  Date? Hell, she didn’t even notice I existed. My slicked back hair, my skulls, ripped clothes and my tattoos, didn’t impress her one bit. I don’t think she even knew my name. I decided to ignore her, but the more I tried to suppress my feelings the more violent they became. Knowing I could never have her made me want her more and more. It became an obsession. Who knows? If she didn’t live in a massive mansion surrounded by high brick walls, protected behind big, black gates I might have ended up under her bedroom window every night. That’s how crazy about her I became.

  I was infatuated and infatuated bad.

  To ease the hurt of my unrequited obsession, my childish mind found a different way to get her attention. I started to mock Elena. I just wanted a reaction. And it worked too. She for sure knew my name after a couple of comments I made about her that cracked up the whole class. But then she began to give me hateful looks that made my gut burn. I had ruined it. It escalated from there, and before I knew it, I was full-on bullying her.

  I’m ashamed to admit it, but I became an insufferable asshole.

  I wanted to stop, I hated myself even while I was doing it, but I couldn’t. I was a bunch of raging hormones and rejected pride. If I hadn't been so caught up with feelings I didn’t know how to handle, I would have made her notice me by making her laugh. Instead, I made her cry.

  I remember one time, I was walking along the corridor with some of my friends and Elena was coming the other way with some of her friends. She hadn’t noticed me yet, and she was laughing with her friends.

  I started to mimic her laugh and my friends laughed, egging me on.

  She looked at me with surprise as I snorted, something she did when she was laughing hard. I curled my nose up like a pig’s and snorted again, adding in an oink this time. My friends started to oink too. Even now, I can still remember the way she looked at me. Her eyes were full of hurt, but her jaw was clenched tightly. It still makes me feel ashamed of myself to this day.

  “Why do you hate me so much?” she asked in a shaky voice. “I’ve never done anything to you.”

  And that was the problem. She’d never done anything to me because I was nothing to her.

  I looked back into her eyes, and biting down the black shame I felt inside, I smiled cruelly. “Because you’re nothing. You’re just a grunting pig.”

  This got another round of oinks from my friends.

  Elena’s face had crumpled and she’d run.

  Like I said, I was an unforgivable asshole. A monster.

  It’s fair to say Franklin School taught me nothing about how to get girls to notice me, but it did teach me something valuable. It taught me that in this world, the rich get more than the poor. The rich get respect… power. They have their own secret little club that stands head and shoulders above the poor. And I knew before I left that school that one day, I would be one of them.

  I worked my ass off through college and university, studying business, and the day I left Oxford with a first-class degree in business and management, I started my own business. Now I’m twenty-seven and the CEO of a very successful company and I’m a multi-millionaire in my own right.

  Yet, the name Elena Woods reduces me to the poor teen I
once was. I can’t take my eyes off the photo on her application. There she is. All grown up. A gloriously beautiful blonde goddess. I should be way past my infatuation but here I am, heart racing and palms sweating. It’s like I’m a teenager again. Only this time, it seems Elena is the one trying to get my attention now.

  And she has it.

  I stare at her photo. Her hair is wavy and long, her green eyes are sparkling, her skin is flawless. I imagine what it would feel like to run my finger over her full lips. To kiss them, and then to have her kiss her way down my body. Or wrap that sexy mouth around my cock, making my body hers. I imagine plunging into her pussy, fucking her until she’s begging me for more.

  My cock throbs and hardens

  Jesus! I shake the thought away. The CEO of the company sitting behind his desk with a raging hard on is never a good look.

  But damn.

  Even just looking at her picture, brings my obsession back to the fore. Hell, who am I trying to kid? It never really went away. When we left school, we went our separate ways, going to different colleges, but she was never far from my thoughts. I dated girls – of course, I did – but none of them were Elena. I carried such a big torch for her, all the other girls felt like second best. No matter what they did or how hard they tried.

  Elena had always been perfection to me. She still is.

  And… now she just landed right back in my life and reignited a hundred old thoughts, a hundred lost feelings. I know deep inside that this is my chance to do two things. First, to show her I’m not that same jerk who made her life hell in high school. Second, to show her that now we’re both in the same world, maybe, just maybe, I’d be worth her time.

  I wonder if she would have applied for this job if she knew I was the one she would be working for. She couldn’t have known. I changed my name when I left school. I decided I wanted nothing from my father. He had abandoned me to my own devices and I wanted to show my mother how much I appreciated the sacrifices she’d made for me. I changed my surname from Winston to Miller.

  If Elena had seen the name Ashton Winston instead of Ashton Miller, would she still have sent me her resume? The answer to that is easy: 100 percent… no.

  I tear my eyes away from her photograph and look over the rest of her resume. It’s pretty impressive. She went to the University of Warwick and her experience is impressive too. She’s worked as a personal assistant to a CEO in a tech start up for the last two years, which means I can put her resume on the keep pile without having to defend the choice.

  I debate throwing some of the other resumes off the pile to increase the chances of Elena being chosen for the job, but a handful of applications going to HR, they won’t be happy. They like choice, plus they’re expecting a lot of applicants – this job comes with a multitude of benefits – and if they only see four or five applicants to choose from, they’ll be looking to widen their scope.

  There are other ways to make sure Elena gets this job, and I plan to do whatever it takes to make sure it happens. She’s getting this job if it is the last thing I do.

  This is my second chance to get the girl of my dreams.

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  Elena

  * * *

  I sit in the waiting area in the entrance lobby of Wave, a multimedia solutions company, wringing my hands while trying to not be obvious that I’m a nervous wreck. I’m the only person in the waiting area, but I know that doesn’t mean anything. There’s no way there aren't hundreds of other applicants for the personal assistant job I’m here to interview for.

  I look around me subtly, taking in the ultra-modern monochrome décor and glass where walls should be. I can see people moving around the corridors all around the waiting area. In the corner of the waiting area, a receptionist is sitting behind a large desk with an earpiece. She takes call after call, directing the callers to the right lines without missing a beat. I would hate her job. Even if there’s no client sitting here, with all these glass walls, she must be conscious of the fact she can be seen from almost every direction, so any client walking around the building might be able to see her.

  Still, I need a job so badly maybe I can put up with such a goldfish bowl environment. Hopefully, the position I’ve applied for is not going to have me situated at the front like her. But if I have to, I can cope with the glass. It’s really a small price to pay if I get this job. Because my God, do I need it.

  This is my third interview and while I was prepared for the last two with dedicated research as soon as I was called for the interview, I still didn’t get either of the jobs. This time, I didn’t have a chance to do much research. I got the call to come for the interview just hours ago and there was no negotiation as to the dates.

  The woman was extremely inflexible. “This job has to be filled as soon as possible and if you are not interested, then I have other candidates to call,” she informed me coldly.

  All I know is the company offers multimedia solutions to other businesses and they have a steady growth. Oh, and the CEO’s name, Ashton Miller, which is nothing, seeing I have applied to be his assistant. It bothered me a bit that his first name is Ashton, because the last Ashton I knew was a real asshole who made my life a living hell, but I’m not going to let the fact he shares a first name with the boy who left a bad taste in my mouth stop me from a plum job like this.

  All I really know about him is that he started the company from pretty much nothing and built it into an empire. And he’s a multi-millionaire. I don’t think HR is going to be all that impressed with the extent of my knowledge.

  I force myself to concentrate on the positives instead of the negatives. I might not know the company inside out, but I do know the job inside out. I was the personal assistant to the CEO at my last job for two years. So I know a thing or two about keeping everything organized and running smoothly. I’m going to concentrate on talking about that in my interview.

  It’s still going to be hard because Wave is one of those companies everyone in tech wants to work for. It’s fast paced, growing steadily, and the benefits that come with

  the job are amazing. There is going to be a lot of stiff competition for this job. I’m just hoping the short notice works in my favor. It’s a small straw to clutch, but right now, it’s the only one I’ve got, so I’m taking it and clinging onto it with both hands.

  “Ms. Woods?” the secretary in the corner says with an overly bright smile plastered on her face.

  “Yes,” I reply with a nervous smile.

  “You can go through to your interview now. It’s in conference room D. Down the hall in front of you, right to the end. You can’t miss it.”

  “Thank you.”

  I start walking down the hallway she pointed to, and I’m relieved to see solid walls along here. The thought of having an interview in full view of the whole office really didn’t fill me with joy. As I walk, reminding myself to walk tall, which isn’t easy when you’re just over five feet tall, I wipe my sweaty palms down my skirt, pretending to smooth out the material.

  I reach the end of the hallway and come to a door marked conference room D. I take a deep breath, exhale it out slowly, then I knock on the door.

  “Come in,” a man’s voice calls through the door.

  I put my game face on. I don’t want to go in there acting like this is my last option before I lose my house, which isn’t far from being true, but the last thing I want is for the interviewer to smell the desperation inside me. I have to act like I am made for the position and give off an air of confidence, even if I don’t really feel it.

  I push the door open, slipping on my best corporate smile as I do it. The room is huge and is dominated by a long glass table that could comfortably seat twenty people. Only three people are in the room though. A woman and two men. They are all dressed in suits, as am I, and I start to feel a little more at home. This is my world. It has been since I left school and yes, there will be other candidates for this position, but that doesn’t
mean I’m not the best match for the job. It seems my fake it until you make it attitude is really starting to pay off. Already I can see myself working here. I can see myself fitting right in.

  The three people stand up as I step into the room as I move towards the table and extend my hand.

  The woman reaches out and shakes my hand first. “Sally Atkins, assistant HR manager,” she says with a clipped smile.

  “Elena Woods,” I smile back.

  I repeat the process with the man in the middle who is David Malone, the HR manager, and Aaron Grey, an assistant HR.

  “Take a seat, Elena. By the way, we’re all on a first name basis here,” David says.

  The three of them sit together on one side of the table and I sit down opposite David, so I am central to the three of them. I’m outnumbered, but I swallow down my nerves and square my shoulders. There is a glass of water in front of my seat and I pick it up and take a sip. My mouth is dry as a desert.

  “Your resume is impressive,” David begins.

  “Thank you,” I reply.

  David gives me a slight nod and continues, “So you have a degree in business studies from abroad,” he’s reading from my resume.

  “Yes, I was sent to study in England. It was a good, enriching experience.”

  He looks up. “And you have plenty of experience of working as a personal assistant in this industry, but the start-up you worked for most recently went bust, didn’t it?”

  I nod.

  “Why do you think that was?”

  I decide again to go with honesty. If I try and sugar coat my answer, it could make it look like I don’t see what’s right in front of me. “Well, the CEO was rather short sighted. At first, he loved the company, and he was excited to expand their offerings, but as the market got tougher, that excitement just sort of fizzled out of him. It’s my belief that he got scared and rather than developing any new ideas, he coasted it out on the dying one until it was no longer viable.”